Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method of manufacturing multilayer ceramic capacitors, in which electrode layers of electrode material are locally applied to sheets of dielectric ceramic material, the sheets provided with electrode layers are stacked and compressed to form a laminated plate and this plate is then subdivided into separate capacitor elements in such a manner that successive electrode layers are exposed at opposite end faces of the capacitor elements, after which the capacitor elements are sintered and are provided with an electrically conducting layer on the said end faces.
Such a method is known from U.S. Pat. No. 3,617,834. In this known method, stacked layers of electrode material and ceramic material are subdivided into individual capacitor components by cutting or by another known manner not described further; this is effected, for example, by sawing, stamping and the like. When the green ceramic material, which is soft and brittle, is subjected to cutting, stamping or sawing, material crumbles off, is displaced and is smeared onto at the cutting surfaces, as a result of which the exposed electrode layers are contaminated and contacting of these layers with the electrically conducting layer to be applied later is poor and difficult. Moreover, when the said cutting processes are used, the risk of delamination is fairly high.